64bit Windows Launches April

We’ve been hearing chip giants AMD and Intel waffle on about 64bit computing all week (in fact, they seem to have got bored and started banging on about dual core processors instead) and now we know when we can put all this processory goodness to effect: April.

Yes, 64bit Windows, now officially dubbed "Windows XP 64" (inspired!), will come to a PC near us in next month. Finally. Thank God. About Time. They say anger follows emotional release, so here it is: AMD has been shipping 64bit Athlon processors since 2003!

Anyway, back to my sanity: the news comes via the tongue of Window’s chief Jim Allchin (smarming above) who was speaking at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco yesterday. He once again proclaimed the company to be “locked on to 64bit” which is kinda encouraging and said the mutated version of Windows Server 2003 is expected to beat Windows XP 64 to shelves by a couple of weeks; the former due in early next month, the latter sometime in the middle.

It has to be pointed out that Intel is no doubt doing cart wheels with this news (it was announced at the Intel Developer Forum, after all). It began rolling out its consumer line of 64bit desktop processors just last week. On the other hand, if you are AMD who has had 64bit processors on sale for over 18 months that's got to sting a bit.

In related news, Google has moved to scotch rumours it is trying to build its own operating system. The search engine guru has recently hired Mark Lucovsky, Microsoft's operating system architect, but - in this instance - denies that 1 + 1 = 2.